Ex-deputy gets 18 years after detainees drown in locked van

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A deputy in South Carolina whose police van was swept away by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two girls looking for mental well being treatment trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking drugs for her concern and anxiety and Inexperienced’s family stated she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday mental well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after a number of kin of the women stated his determination to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the choose. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save lots of time.”

Circuit Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on every reckless murder charge and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it against a guardrail, preventing the ladies from having the ability to get out the sliding door they used to enter the van. Flood and a deputy with him did not have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising earlier than it got too dangerous and rescuers may now not hear them.

“How terrible should that have been to take a seat there and wait to your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While other factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just outside Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he could not flip round because he may not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, but it was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others had been trying to unfairly blame just the former deputy as a substitute of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him regardless that taking the women to the mental well being amenities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to those two women by giving injustice to this good man," protection legal professional Jarrett Bouchette said. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced advised the choose he tried all the pieces he might to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was gradual to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my part and other those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, however it still would not open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to lower the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water acquired greater and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to learn to follow the rules and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I cannot forget. Fortuitously, I still remember my mom as a happy lady, a joyful girl who loved her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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Comply with Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.